What you people who do not use the Apple product fail to recognize is that the $45 product does NOT do what the Apple product does. You just think it does. We have owned the $45 products and also owned the Apple products and we KNOW what we are buying. There is a reason why iPhones and iPads dominate 80% of mobile web usage while the Android OS devices are outselling them three to one with BOGO promotions and spiffs to sales people that sometimes reward the sales guy beyonds the price the customer pays. The iPhone/iPads are USEFUL.Nor is your price analogy correct. It is far distorted from reality. With contract pricing, the costs are pretty close to equal. In fact, you can get an iPhone 4 under contract for free. . . the same price you can get many Android phones under contract for. . . but Apple doesn't spiff the sales people. To try and convince people to buy other than iPhone, Samsung's advertising budget to sell its smartphones was over $9 billion last year alone! Sales spiffs are included in that figure.
Currently, Apple is selling every iPhone and iPad they can manufacture. . . and are expanding into more markets. They can keep this up for quite some time. They have 80% of ALL the world's phone profits—not just smartphone profits—while having less than 10% of the world's market share. Apple and Samsung split 103% of the profits (yes, that figure is correct, because other phone makers are selling at a loss!). There is lots of room left for growth.
OH, and Rocky? Your dig that it is Apple that is selling the clones is noted. It is the other way around.
Market watchers are at a loss to explain the drop in Apple valuation. Its fundamentals are phenomenal... they have over $150 BILLION in cash and short term securities and NO DEBT! That is more than 97% of the market caps of all other publicly traded companies on the stock exchange! A P/E of 13 is unheard of in a company like Apple... and when you subtract the cash holdings it is a miraculous 8-9! This is a company that has created FOUR major product categories in 12 years. . . and holds the promise of more. Why, then is its stock tanking when Amazon with a p/e of over 3,000 and now because they posted a loss, not calculable?
The stock drops on the silliest of rumors... and "analysts" toss out rumors they KNOW to be false, and admit they trade for their own profit on those rumors, and are NOT prosecuted. This happened this week when one "analyst" published that Apple was going to do a 10 for 1 stock split when the analyst KNEW that Apple stock holders had to approve such a split. He sold on the rise, bought back in on the fall, after he admitted he knew it was false, and why, when he published it... and thousands of people lost a lot of money! Why has he not been arrested?
Apple reported 4th best quarter in business history, eclipsed only by its OWN record quarters, and did it on quarter being compared to a year ago's rare 14 long week quarter (which when adjusted for that, was absolutely phenomenal) and BEAT the year ago quarter, and because on just two metrics slightly below STREET targets, Apple stock took a beating.
WHY???? They missed what overheated analysts wanted, wild guesses that the analysts had pulled out of their collective asses. Nothing that Apple had claimed would happen. In fact, Apple had WARNED, because of the release of the new iPad Mini, that margins would be lower that quarter, but the analysts ignored that. . . they wanted to be blown away. They didn't get blown away and so they piled on with headlines about "Apple misses", and "Apple disappoints"... all on one of the BEST QUARTERS IN HISTORY!
A favorite radio ad ends: “Sure you could buy a hamburger for $1. But then you’d have to eat it.”
Everyone buying Apple products know they can get something with similar specs cheaper. But they know they’d have to use it.
Thanks Swordmaker.
One of my friends has made a ton of money buying Apple puts. He started going short when the stock was near 600.
Yes, Apple makes good products, but iPhone does not make you any money, it does not drive you to work, it does not wash your laundry, it does not cook your food. When all is said and done it is just an electronic toy.
Thanks for the post. Nothing is rational in this market when honest assets are competing with fiat pumping.
Kass reverse course rather quickly. Twitter.....
2/26 12:48pm quoted “Gnome rumor”
2/26 1:19pm said “Apple trading near $449 from the days low at $437.36” “I sell off some of this outsized position AAPL”.
2/26 1:24pm “If you think one person can move Apple”
“This is a company that has created FOUR major product categories in 12 years. . . and holds the promise of more.”
I’m interested in the rumor of an Apple watch. My sister gave me a Nike Fuel for Christmas and it’s cool, but strikes me as just the beginning of the “smart watch” era